Thinking about the measurement of intangible things like the media and how this affects people

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

BBC Business gets pulled up

This weekend the FT ran an item on the BBC’s business news coverage. It followed a report by the BBC Trust into the failings of the networks business news. Business news has always been a bit of a Cinderella on the BBC, although with the exclusion of the dedicated business news networks (like CNBC and Bloomburg) there is the impression that none of them take it all that seriously.

I undertook a quantitative study a couple of years back for one of the BBC’s news channel competitors and my recollections are that the BBC’s news coverage was comparative in length, although tended towards a greater use of repeated items.

If I have a current frustration it is the lack of macro-economic coverage on current networks. Possibly this reflects an increasing interest on my part however I am of the opinion that there are some major shifts in the economic structure of the world (like China), pressures on prices and net impact on inflation. These for me are the important issues particularly if accompanied by comment from some of the many insightful commentators working in association with City of London.

One of these structural changes is the shift in economic power towards the City of London over the past couple of years. Has the BBC mirrored this shift? I think not, and has it failed to reflect the professional interests of the increasing number of people involved in this sector?… I think it has.

As an aside, I concur with the reports highlighting the sycophantic interview with Bill Gates. He was talking about the launch of Vista (and not about his charity work) and deserved to the tackled on issues like the rise of Google, Microsoft’s depressed share price and the organisations future strategy.